M.L. Emmett

You breathed your last breath from the air
in this room;
that threadbare Persian carpet
holds flakes from your skin;
...

Look in the mirror and what do you see?
This is your golden time, your early spring
A dew-fresh face, peachy and wrinkle free
You are sweetest rosebud near blooming
...

Young women know all about style -
how to fix the decimal point
between them and their mothers
differentiate themselves
...

The poor keep moving
as if relocation
could reframe the algebra.
...

Poems find a space for themselves
in chaos.

Poems are the wormholes
...

In the seventies
we brought back silks and saris
hot with colours
that shocked the nights
...

In Winnipeg
they dig the winter graves
in autumn
before the sun sleeps
...

Someone had intended
to mend
this beach-stranded boat
...

~ for Angela Scuteri ~


Shadows hold their breath
...

Be strong
imagine yourself
in one of those death chambers
with the stench of mortal sweat on every person
...

The scent of death
lingers for years
in a place
...

The gondola chains chink chink
with the rising tide
deep throated voices
echo and bounce
...

honouring Bruce Dawe and the war dead

Once a month they're bringing them home
they're picking up pieces, they can find
...

Emily will take her cedar box
of hidden poems
throwing them on a Sou' Westerly breeze
in a New England Spring —
...

He walks lopsided
shaking his head
agitated,
irritated,
...

The voice inside the head
of a frightened madman,
a so-called schizophrenic,
starts humming
...

Turner sun
blotched orange
fused
and slid
...

Poems go to work on public transport
and come home
with gritty realism
pressed in the tread of their shoes.
...

Poems are fingers of the past
catching memories that fall

Poems colour pure memory
...

Dark days don't need verbs
no doing, thinking action days
no being beyond the room, the bed
the dead edge of damage.
...